lingering glances

So, there I was, minding my own business. It was that special time that we all look forward to every month where we get to pay our bills. Okay, maybe not all of them, but each week, I pay those that I have received. It's the usual thing; you get a large stack of mail. Then you start sorting it. The junk mail is thrown in the trash, the obvious bills are put into one pile, the personal mail is put into another pile, and then there is the last pile, which is everything of unknown importance. You toss the junk, save the personal, pay the bills, and then you go through the last pile. Usually this last pile is junk. It has lately increased since around the match. I now have a whole lot of offers to consolidate loans, and take out credit cards. The former I look at, the latter I toss.

As I was saying, i was going through the piles of unknowns. I picked one up, and it had no return address other than the acronym "D.O.N."

So, I opened it up, and saw something I had not seen in a while. It was a congratulatory letter from the US Navy.

It went something like 'congrats on graduating, now all you have left is the experience of residency, and the student debt you've racked up, and while we can't help you with the former, boy, do we have a deal for you on the latter!'

This note then goes into all the pay and benefits that I can get from the Navy.

But the fact of the matter is that I can do math. Yes, I would get about $120,000 over the course of my residency if I were to sign on. Unfortunately, I would have to 'pay back' four years of service for that three year financial boon. That four years would likely amount to in excess of $400,000 of lost income. So, I would take an almost half million dollar hit in exchange for what? For years of being at the whim of the DON (Department Of the Navy)? For more long seperations from my wife? For having no control over where the Hell my family and I lived? Sounds like a swell deal, doesn't it. Instant trashcan fodder, right?

Absolutely.

And yet I find myself lingering upon it. Not because of the money. Not because of the medical and dental benefits. No, I find myself thinking about some damned fool urologist who managed to wake up in Fallujah one day. I think about how my old unit was the one that went into Al Firdos Square three years ago. I think about my sister who will likely be deployed there in the very near future. In short, I think about how I am not there.

And then I start to get mad. I have a beautiful and loving wife. I have a great future, with the assurances of a great income. I have already done my duty. I already had my butt out there on some godforsaken corner of dirt. I have all of these things, and I would have to be pretty stupid to want to push it all aside, and risk it all just for some misguided sense of honor or duty, or some other intangible that I cannot lay words upon. Yep, one would have to really be soft in the head to do that, I think to myself, as I try unconvincingly to laugh at it. But I am not laughing, and that's why I am mad; I must be the dumbest sunofabitch on the planet, because in the face of all of this overwhelming logic spelling out in fine detail why I should just toss it in the circular file, and never think about it again, I can't quite get myself to throw away a stupid piece of paper.

Respectfully Submitted,
-doc Russia